


you know how i feel

by burlesquecomposer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Manipulation, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Nogitsune Trauma, Other, PTSD Stiles, Psychological Trauma, Voiles, mentions of past violence, post-3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:01:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burlesquecomposer/pseuds/burlesquecomposer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red is for unsolved cases, green is for solved. Sometimes Stiles feels like he’s dipping back into yellow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you know how i feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfinglet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfinglet/gifts).



It’s never really gone.

It’s not enough that everything’s on paper. The police reports are in, with the Sheriff fluffing as many details as he could. But even though Stiles already took down the mystery web from his own bedroom wall, gathered all the photos and news clippings and bright tangles of yarn and burned them in the backyard, a similar copy is still up in his dad’s office. When he entered the station one night to drop off a dinner of quesadillas and chopped fruit instead of tortilla chips, his footsteps slowed as he watched his dad reassembling the web. All the people he hurt and let suffer, faces connected with string like a twisted family tree no one wanted to grow. The Sheriff was fixing it now, adjusting to new evidence and tying off loose ends just as a scattering of construction workers patched the station back together around him, and Stiles stood there in the dust and rubble, waiting for someone to come and fix him.

Red is for unsolved cases, green is for solved. Sometimes Stiles feels like he’s dipping back into yellow.

He sleeps over at Scott’s too much now that Isaac’s away. Melissa doesn’t say anything about the couple times she’s passed the guest room in the middle of the night to find him sitting at the edge of the bed, sweat gleaming on his brow as he counts his fingers with trembling hands. In the morning she makes them quick scrambled eggs and microwave sausages and gives Stiles a lingering squeeze on the shoulder.

He holds himself back around Lydia. No sudden movements, no getting too close – she’s still a bit jumpy about what it did to her. Since they’d been physically separated, Stiles’ memory isn’t as clear in those moments, but the emotional impression swirls between them like a stain. He remembers stalking up to her in a narrow space, growling in her ear, getting close to her in a way he’d never ever wanted and the gnawing sensation of a strange hunger deep in his gut. Lydia insists she’s fine but Stiles treats her like cracked glass. He’s only touched her shoulder twice in the past month – once for a yearbook candid and once at The Funeral.

Lydia calls the short time he was possessed his “MIA” period as if it absolves him of the sins that Void committed with his body. Stiles still isn’t over the knowledge that he, however indirectly, killed the best friend she’d ever had and may never have again. And it’s that, among the rest of the scraps of guilt he tried to burn away, which has him wringing his hands raw even though he knows he’ll never be rid of it.

When Scott’s off work, Stiles visits Deaton at the clinic and promises to guard the Nemeton jar with everything he’s got left. Deaton already seems to know why.

He sticks close to his pack. Consciously, until it’s a habit, he keeps his phone charged at all times; just in case. He asks for study sessions and spontaneous car rides and nights out drinking stolen whiskey, desperate to keep another’s company for as long as possible because when he’s finally alone, he hears its voice like a low whisper from the corner of that bright white room in his head. At first it’s mostly little things. His name, a beckoning, a verbatim replay of the words he’d drawled for Scott as he twisted the ninjatō in his stomach. The voice in its rough lisp creeps like a spider around the back of his neck. But soon it starts speaking to him in class, at the station, during lacrosse practice until Stiles swears he can feel its shiny lamprey teeth ice cold against his ear as he passes the ball and watches his breath billow in the chill.

_It won’t work, Stiles._

When he can’t look in the mirror anymore, he cuts his hair short. That doesn’t work, either. He still sees it in his sleep – the nogitsune charging toward him, glaring, shouting, wearing his face.

His dad calls in the evening as Stiles is lying on his bed doing nothing. “Scott and his mom and I are going to Beacon Diner for something late. I know you haven’t had that in a while. Want to come?”

"Sure, we’ll come."

“‘We’?”

Stiles blinks. “ _I,_ sorry.”

He doesn’t notice some of the quirks that have settled into his makeup. The fluttering tap of his fingers on his desk when he’s bored. The softer, muted way he moves, drawing himself in instead of out on the edge. The warmth he feels around any source of electrical power and the funny looks he gets from Derek. What he does notice, when they’re hanging out at Kira’s house one night, is the fact that he can pick up most of what her mother is saying on the phone; it’s only after she hangs up that he realizes she hadn't been speaking in English.

He gets back an algebra test from his teacher with several red question marks next to a series of lines and numbers he wrote under a problem. Kira, with concern scrawled across her face, tells him it’s the Japanese multiplication method.

He overhears Derek privately whisper to Scott, _"It’s getting darker."_ Stiles knows they’re not talking about the weather but he doesn’t know what they _are_ referring to until a picture of himself in a brighter room reveals a shadow around his edges. He deletes it.

When Kate returns, everything goes to hell. She finds out about Allison and brings in a storm and nothing and no one is safe anymore, not even Lydia who’s just starting to get a grasp on her powers, not Scott who loved her more than himself, not Kira who only fought once at her side, and especially not Derek who’s missing but who Stiles knows isn’t dead – Kate’s drawing him back to her, tugging sweetly at the strings, saving him like the last bite of a good meal. Peter’s evil again (no surprise) and even less of a help than usual, at that. The pack is breaking, dropping like flies, and Melissa and Deaton have her hands full trying to piece them all together while they’re still fighting tooth and claw.

Stiles is close to his breaking point, receding into a panic attack in the middle of the night, pacing his room and hyperventilating and close to fainting because now he thinks he might know how a banshee feels. Everyone’s going to die and there’s nothing he can do and the only thing that’s helping him breathe now is the hiss of a voice from the jar on his bookshelf.

When he takes the smooth, cold wooden box in his hands he can feel the nogitsune standing behind him but he doesn’t look. He doesn’t need to.

"Help us. I don’t care what you want. Just help us."

He texts everyone _Sorry. I love you._ and turns off his phone. They’d talk him out of it and the only thing Stiles doesn’t need right now is hesitation. The copy of him quirks its head to the side. Only when his hands stop shaking does Stiles twist the lid.

_Let me in,_ it says.

Stiles does, and feels like he’s been fixed.


End file.
